


It Scares Me Half To Death

by BugTongue



Series: Leopika Week 2018 [6]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Leopika Week 2018, M/M, Minor Character Death, Personification of Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 01:39:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: Leorio is a doctor who does his absolute best, and Kurapika is the reaper who visits his hospital.





	It Scares Me Half To Death

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled this AU out of my ass but I was also REALLY PASSIONATE about it the whole time so I hope its enjoyable to read.

The image of Death in the mind of the human race was, rather unanimously, related to the image of the dead. A skeleton, or creatures that feasted on dead flesh, often came to mind instantly upon hearing the word. Death. Proper noun, capitalized, and standing in the doorway of Mrs. Marjorie's hospital room as her breath rattled into her lungs, then out. In, then out. It was a necessary cycle.

Death's gaze slid from the elderly woman to the young man sitting beside her, holding her hand and blissfully oblivious of the blood clot forming in his leg, ready to shoot straight to his brain when he stood up to leave.

Sometimes it seemed unfair to mortals that the young should die before the old, or the good before the bad, as if living longer was a gift and dying a punishment. Humans were very intriguing in that way, Death supposed.

"You shouldn't be spying, this one isn't yours." Death walked up behind Death in a wave of lightless black feathers and tattered cloaks, even the fur trim was void of luster. Death glanced at him in distaste, unable to stop his hand from clutching the doorway tight enough to dent. He couldn't answer like this, he was visible, and the other Death was not. He could only stand there and watch as Death reached out his long arm and touched the man's shoulder, officially marking him for his final series of events as a living creature.

Somewhere in the back of Death's mind he could hear the large cogs of the universe turn, settle, and continue on in the endless march of time itself.

There were different Deaths. This seems like an obvious remark, considering the multitude of ways one might die, but it wasn't the ways of dying so much as the ways Death liked to turn the wheel. Chrollo enjoyed the more poetic, ironic deaths, because he was an overdramatic son of a bitch who deeply enjoyed his job in whatever capacity he felt joy. Kurapika preferred justice, honor, fitting deaths for the lives lead up to the moment he touched them.

He was out of the hospital before the man's skull cracked against the tile floor. Through the sliding glass doors, around the side of the building until roses and other decorative flowers forced him through a short maze of paths, to the smoking bench where he could snatch the cigarette out from between Leorio's lips and take a deep drag through the filter. Leorio's lips pursed to the side as his brow came down. "No don't ask first, it's fine."

"You shouldn't smoke these anyway." Kurapika took another deep drag before handing it back, holding the smoke in until he had to breathe out to keep up appearances. Leorio wasn't his. He had no idea when or how Leorio would die, and that's how he liked it. With any luck, his inability to quit smoking would be irrelevant anyway.

"What are you doing at the hospital again? I told you last week I can't hang out while I'm here because I get paged every five fucking seconds." As if to corroborate his story, the pager went off, and he tilted his head back against the hospital wall to give Kurapika a worn out look. "Looks like you get to finish this for me."

Kurapika took the proffered cigarette but waited for Leorio to kiss him and stand up to put it in his mouth. He spoke around it easily. "I'll be over tonight when you get out of here, I wanted to let you know."

"Could always text me, and check your messages while you're at it. Ah forget it, I'll see you tonight, I love you." Leorio put his hand on Kurapika's back and kissed his cheek briskly, then scurried off to where he was needed.

Death pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at the bite marks he'd left on the filter, hair falling in his face to hide the flush riding high on his cheeks.

\---

  
Leorio, lover to Death, came home late. He wasn't aware of the creature he loved, but that was only because Kurapika didn't want him thinking too heavily about his own mortality, if there was any way to live forever, if there was any way to stop the cycle, or reverse it. Humans loved the idea of that, and they never believed him when he told them the truth.

Kurapika was fitting the cover back onto Leorio's wall clock, having fixed the component inside that had broken a week ago, when Leorio walked in the door and started undressing almost immediately. "I need a shower before anything, if you find a menu on the fridge we can just order something and watch a movie. Or something." He smelled strongly of hospital soap and sweat.

"If you shower now, I can take you out somewhere instead."

"You could. I don't think I'd be very good company at a restaurant right now though." He was out of the coat, out of the shirt, shoes kicked off and leaving only the pants and belt he was currently fiddling with.

"Eating in then." Kurapika sent him a reassuring smile, soft and understanding. Judging by the relief that washed over Leorio's expression, he had needed it.

After half an hour, much longer than the average Leorian shower, he came out looking cleaner both physically and emotionally. Kurapika had already ordered the food, picking something easy that he knew Leorio liked.

Kurapika didn't live with Leorio, but he might as well. Living with a human seemed nice, playing at being mortal was a sweet distraction from his usual existence, something Death was known to do now and then in various ways. Persephone, for one, was proof that Death still longed for contact with creatures not wholly taken up in the business of ending life.

His lips ghosted up Leorio's spine in bed, feeling along the knobs of bone well anchored in meat, healthy but beginning to weaken near the tailbone and skull from being too tall for the humans around him. Kurapika wanted to tell him to stand taller, but it wasn't his place to chip away at Leorio's impulsive kindness. His lips moved up along the shoulder to press a kiss there, then in again to bite Leorio's ear just to feel his muscles move and his soft gasp of air. Living, so much life inside him. If Kurapika matched his breathing to the other's then he didn't have to think about it, but it was hard when that breath changed up due to moods and other stimulus.

"Kurapika..."

He licked from tip to lobe and suckled there, hand sliding over incredibly warm skin at Leorio's side, and settled at the hip bone. The pace with which he fucked his precious mortal was just fast enough to keep him clutching the pillow under his chest, but in pleasure only. Kurapika ground in hard and groaned as Leorio did, feeling the man beneath him shudder and hold still with anticipation as Kurapika drew back out and resumed his pace.

Sex was required for living things as a whole, but not individually. Mating and bonding, stress relief, to alleviate boredom, these were all reasons for living creatures to go at each other. Death didn't need it. Death didn't need to keep up with any functions of life, but he still enjoyed it. Eating, sleeping, fucking, it was all pleasant and very, very distracting. Kurapika fucked Leorio until they came, a hand wrapped around the dick hanging heavy towards the mattress and a deep, trembling cry left Leorio's mouth, followed by greedy gasps of air.

Kurapika was completely smitten with pretending for his mortal. Smitten with the mortal himself as well. It would be a terrible shame, he thought at times like this, to miss even one fleeting moment.

\---

Standing behind Leorio in the operating room was torture. He could not be Kurapika and Death simultaneously, it was like flipping a switch, but it wasn't as if he was two separate people. Death did not care about the act of touching the dying, it was his job, but Kurapika cared deeply about the man working tirelessly to do the impossible.

"Scalpel..."

"Scalpel."

"I'm making a cut... Check his breathing. Check his fucking breathing."

The tone was calm, steady, Leorio's focus like a wall of intent, as if he could will this man to survive. But he was bleeding out on the emergency room table and suffering from entirely too much damage because of the full body trauma suffered half an hour previously. The dying man saved someone else at the cost of his own safety, and Kurapika watched over him, waiting for the correct moment. His feathers brushed every corner of the room, a soft movement of air, a white void that reflected nothing and cast no shadow even on itself. Like this he was Death, and the long-dry bone of his face held no expression to match the torment within. Touching his mark would hurt the mortal he loved, but he was cosmically required to do so.

Kurapika reached out, and Death pulled back.

Death reached out, and Kurapika turned his face away as he laid his exposed phalanxes against the bloody and bruised configuration of the man's face.

He retracted his arm and stood in mourning as the heart monitor stuttered and flatlined, and after a painful twenty minutes of failed attempts at resuscitation, Leorio threw his scalpel into the wall and stood facing Death, unseeing, with his wrists crossed above his head. The mask covering his face trembled, and he was left to gather himself while his team cleaned up the mess.

\---

“Sometimes people just die Leorio, and that's alright.”

“I could have saved him, I know that I could have, he deserved to live! Just, just long enough to be told thank you. Just for that. He deserved to know…” Leorio sat with his knees nearly brushing his ears and a cigarette held burning near his forehead. Kurapika could see his tears dripping onto the dirt between his shoes, and he bit his lip.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

Kurapika sat beside him and rubbed his back, soothing the ache within them both just a fraction. “I don't think that if that man was meant to live, that you would have let him die. I think, this time, it was out of your hands.”

“I hate that kind of answer.” He sucked on the cigarette before putting it out against the ground, then sat up to tuck it back into the pack in his pocket. “I hate thinking there's no helping someone.”

He wouldn't look at Kurapika, so Kurapika cupped his face and pulled him into a gentle kiss. Two-day old scruff on his face, sleepless eyes, and his hair long past falling out of it's gell. “That's why I love you so much. You do everything you can, and still believe more can be done.” He kissed him again, a moment longer, then pulled Leorio's head onto his shoulder to squeeze out the last few bitter tears.

A cough. A sniffle. His pager went off.

“I love you too Kurapika. Will you be over tonight?”

“Of course I will.”


End file.
